I've just posted an experience update with about 175 new stories. Thank you to everyone who contributed, to BlueStar for being on the cover, and to the review team… that said, I think I've got to write another article about DIY piercing, because there are a little too many (extremely self-righteous) “BME doesn't support self-piercing” comments being left by reviewers as they turn down stories that should be posted, even though BME absolutely supports it.

I really want to be very clear on this subject: I fully support someone's right to pierce themselves, and am not going to censor their stories. Even if you disagree with that, please understand that BME's experience archive is to document what's really going on in this community, not to present some censored and sterilized politically correct version of what's going on.

Yeah, that also means “you lied to your parents”, “you used a fake ID”, and “I'm sorry, but what you did is dangerous” are also not valid reasons for turning down a story… if it's terribly written (many of these are), then by all means reject it, but don't reject something just because you happen to disagree with it or it's not what you would do personally if it's otherwise acceptably written.

The “I know better than you” thing sort of reminds me of thisongoingstory about a 13-year-old girl who's had her abortion personally blocked by the head of the Florida Department of Children and Families, with the courts saying she is “too young to make the decision”.

To put it into context, whether you agree with it or not, abortion is legal in Florida, and a minor has the legal right to make their own mind up about the procedure. To put it into further context, this girl was taken away from her parents when she was seven years old and has bounced between foster and group homes since. She became pregnant (most likely from a much older man, although in Florida it's often legal for an adult to have sex with a child, so it may well not be statuatory rape — Florida is a crazy place) while having run away from the group home. But, even though she has the legal right, the courts will probably delay the process long enough to make the abortion impossible.

Oh hells yeah, welcome to more unwanted children and teen suicide. LOL, right?

With the current “teen trend” being daisy-chaining?, I'm surprised that there aren't more problems… It's one thing to have a sexually charged youth, but when you couple that with religious oppression that blocks birth control, sex education, and abortions, you move the future into perrilous territory.

I suppose though with Western governments slowly going bankrupt, the only way for them to sustain themselves is a disenfranchised youth who are eventually driven into petty crime, smoking pot, and jail — it's the least socially upsetting way of achieving legalized slavery (although the taxpayers funding it might disagree). There are currently well over two million people incarcerated in US prisons slave labor colonies. It's been an explosive growth industry — twenty years ago, the US prison population was less than a quarter of the size it is now, and when I was born it was only 350,000…

Via courier I got Cambodia, Vietnam, and other footage from Jon Cobb for Uvatiarru this morning. Yes, that project is still a go! For those of you who don't recognize the name, I consider Jon one of the great (currently) unsung heroes of body modification, without whom modern body piercing would be very different. He was a huge influence — and friend — to me and many other people who grew up in the piercing scene of the early 1990s and did more than anyone out there to take piercing past the “gauntlet-approved basic-12″ set of piercings. It was a bit of a Pandora's box, I'm sure, but from my point of view it's been nothing but good…

I'm always interested in the tattoos that people in the military choose to get… Usually the meaning and motivation is fairly obvious but other times I wonder exactly what the thought was, and what message is sitting there under the surface.

I've just posted a bit over a thousand pictures to BME/extreme and BME/HARD. Thanks to everyone who's been patient and helped out, and to Dexie for the cover shot of her “strange person”kanji skin removal. More tomorrow!

I've got insane quantities of work to do over the next few days… genuinely unpleasant quantities… so I'll be brief, but while I was in Toronto I picked up the new Goat Horn CD… for fans of eighties basement metal I can't recommend it highly enough. One of the tattoo artists at Shane's shop did the cover art for the CD (they're a local Toronto band). His band also has a space next to them and he was saying they're 100% serious as well — there's no tongue-in-cheek humor when in the liner notes they write:

MESSAGE TO OUR FANS: As soon as you get home from work or school on Fridays, even before you grab a beer, make sure you crank this record up. Then call your friends, figure out the pardy plan and make sure you bring Goat Horn with you to crank again... And remember: No synths, no pedals, no wimps, no nothing, Just Metal! Die!!

Even before I grab a beer???

I picked up some other great CDs that I may mention later but that's the funnest one.

Anyway, for those of you who are stopping by my talk at APP, I hope it's enjoyable — I'll be showing some things that haven't even been on BME by the way — because I suspect it will be my only public speaking appearance. Given how little I like being around people and how far behind on work I am, I have no idea why I volunteered!

Like some kid drawing customized vans in his school notebook, I keep doodling “my sailboat”… It's a huge 100' ferrocement trimaran built around dual wingsails. I know it has a sort of Batmobile quality in the pictures but it's actually modelled after a ray (as in the fish) — as a point of trivia, the biggest of the rays, the manta ray, can grow to about a quarter the size of this boat (22 feet versus 100 feet).

Other than that, I got this sort of annoying email:

Ok, so this header on your iam page has intrigued me, but I just cant figure it out. It looks like Latin to me, but when translated, it doesnt make a while lot of sense.

Eadem would be the same things, as the direct object of the verb. Then resurgo would be I rise again or I revive Then theres mutato this looks like a variation on muto, mutare, which would be to change or to alter in the first person singular, but that wouldnt make sense because you have two verbs in the first person singular without and or anything like that to link them. And thats really the only word mutato resemble so this is all confusing.

So fess up, what is this supposed to say?

I don't care if someone asks me what something means, but starting off by telling me that “it doesn't make a whole lot of sense” and smarmy stuff like “so fess up, what is this supposed to say” implying I don't know my Latin is just rude.